


Disabled Anger

by alternatively_undesignated



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Anger Management, Disability, Disabled Character, Doctor Dad, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, Love at First Sight, Lust at First Sight, M/M, Physical Disability, Snafu's dirty mind, a bad lawyer, bro burgie, bro flo, eugene's heart gets in the way of love, prosthetic leg
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24508333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatively_undesignated/pseuds/alternatively_undesignated
Summary: He always had anger. He was born an angry child and had spent most of his youth in an angry haze. Anger had so far worked to protect him when nothing else had. But now he was being forced to learn to control the anger that protected him.There was only one up side to being forced into this decision. The cute little red thing that he was going to get into his bed by the end of the course. So long as the both of them survived to that point.Or...Merriell has to go to anger management classes and the course leader has a hot son he wants to get to know more. Oh and Merriell has a prosthetic leg.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge, R. V. Burgin/Florence Risely
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Disabled Anger

**Author's Note:**

> This story comes from my own anger and my own growing disabilities. Tho my disability is more towards Eugene's than towards Merriell's.

A question that he had once been asked was, ‘If he could have one super power what would he chose to have?’ At the time his answer had been simple and cocky, ‘To charm anyone he wanted into bed with him. His reply had caused the other marines around him to laugh and echo how gross he was but he couldn’t leave it as just that. He had to add, while eyeing up the one who had asked him that, ‘I can already do that. Must already be super powered’.

The boot who had asked him, some new shot who’d only been with them for half a month, that question was killed later in that day. A bullet got him in the head splitting his skull in two but yet it didn’t instantly kill him. It took thirty minutes for him to to bleed out with non of them able to do anything to help him. Snafu could still hear his screams at night as he lay in the dirt and bleed out in pain and fear.

The answer he gave to his own question would never be achieved now. He’d never gain the super power of being the ‘greatest dad God ever placed on this earth’.

It was for that reason and so many others that two years down the line he wanted to change his answer. Should by some miracle an ability be gifted to him he would want the power to control time. If he was granted that power he would be able go back and correct all the mistakes he had made since returning home and burying his uniform in his Ma’s garden.

But he wasn’t no child who believed in comic book nonsense like super powers, magic and the like. No he was a twenty eight year old vet back home with nothing. He had nothing, he was good for nothing, he was nothing. An ordinary man who had to live his life like everyone else, one miserable day at a time.

Well that wasn’t exactly true. He did have one thing he was good at, and he was. Anger.

He always had anger. He was born an angry child and had spent most of his youth in an angry haze. It was because of this that on his seventeenth birthday he enlisted. He thought that being in the Marines he would be able to settle his anger by focusing on something that he actually gave a dam about. Protecting others had always been a core instinct in him even if he didn’t give much a shit about anyone but himself.

In the marines he earned the nickname SNAFU because of his anger and the fucked up things he did once his feet hit the fight. It followed him from group to group, person to person, to the point that it became the only thing he would answer too. No one wanted to know anything about the man who was ‘fucked up’, that was a pleasure he only allowed a select few to earn.

The plan failed. The Marines didn’t help him get rid of all of his anger. Instead his anger at some things was replaced with others. Soon he was a twenty-something year old fighting in a war watching people around him die. Most of the ones who died first had more hope in humanity than he did. In some regards he envied their blind faith. How they could look at the same destruction he starred at and yet they still thought they were here doing something good.

He knew what he was fight for. The ones who couldn’t fight themselves. It was them that he got angry for and at. Why the fuck should they get a nice life when all of his had been a fight?

At twenty five he lost his leg. He wasn’t even on duty when it happened. He’d been out with some friends enjoying leave when some stupid fuck decided he rather enjoyed the idea of driving his overly expensive car after downing half the bars alcohol supply. The last thing that he remembered before the feeling of rubber against his bones was pushing someone out of the way and a seething anger burning his veins.

His only friend Burgie and his wife had been the two who had to make the life and death choice for him. He hadn’t been awake for most of the time he spent in hospital but he learned from Flo all the relevant information that he needed. One of the best decisions he had ever made was when he wrote Burgie and Flo as his emergency contacts. He knew the two of them would always make the best choices for him if he couldn’t do so. In fact his life would be much better should he just let them make every choice for him for the rest of his days.

The next year was filed with hospitals, discharge papers, and learning to walk all over again. Between all of that was the constant pain, the nights of waking up from torturous nightmares barely recognisable as his own memories, and of course the ever grown and mutating anger.

Learning how to take his leg on and off had been an odd couple of days. They amputated below his left knee. Flo told him how the bones of his whole foot had been completely crushed when the car went over it. It was beyond any skill the doctors had to save it. Burgie had told them to focus on making sure he stayed alive no matter the cost so they chose to save what they could. The scars left behind where fascinating to stare at.

Hours he had spent starring at them. How they twisted around and down his leg disappearing behind the metal. Some days he would stare at it until he felt his stomach hollow out and he couldn’t any longer.

After being discharged he went looking for something else to distract his anger. And he didn’t have to search too hard to find something.

If there was something beside his anger that he was good at it was fighting. Place a gun in his hands and he was a decent shot, you give him something he could beat with his hands and that man was going down hard. It became a skill, an art form, for him to go out to a bar and target the other loose cannons in the room. All it would take was a single look or word at the right time and BANG! the fight would begin and it wouldn’t end until one of them hit the floor and didn’t get back up again. In the begging he would win maybe four of ten fights. By the time he learned how to fight with the prosthetic it became nine out of ten.

And it worked at keeping his anger at bay. He could sleep longer at night on the days that he threw hands with someone else. It became the best and only therapy he could ever afford to take part in.

How he managed to reach twenty-eight and not wound up with brain damage he had no idea. Not that he had had that checked out, he didn’t have the time energy or money to visit the doctor for anything he didn’t think was necessary. He dealt with whatever damage he got from the fights himself and when he couldn’t he had a handy Nurse named Flo ready to mend him.

Burgie hated it. He’d needed someone around him full time after the accident and Burgie had volunteered to take care of him. The lucky bastard had landed a fine job upon his discharge that afford him the ability to own a house with it’s own guest rooms. Flo didn’t mind him living with them, it meant she could have someone to bitch too while watching crappy tv. The two of them where some of the only people he could abide to be around even before he lost the leg.

Of course he couldn’t get away with getting into fights all the time before criminal charges were brought against him. He was surprised he managed to make it a year without so much as a sniff of the police, but then again he did go to the cheap bars that this kind of thing happened at regularly and no one batted an eye.

But as was his nature he had to push it at some fancy bar where drinks cost around ten dollars each. He had to go for the biggest man in the room who unknown to him happened to also own a badge. The next twenty four hours were spent in a holding cell while some lawyer tried to convince the officers to find more crimes ‘he’d committed’.

Wrightman was a very very wrong man who seemed to have a hate boner for him. A lawyer who hanged around the interview room saying whatever he could to provoke him before the police talked with him. Hanged around the custody desk trying persuade the officer at the desk to withhold his call and make sure he was held long enough for him to come with more charges. The man managed to wind Snafu up more than he was happy to admit. He had never been one who could let an opportunity pass to tell a man how small he thought their dick must be and even a high fancy faced lawyer would get in his way.

When they brought him out of the cell for his call they couldn’t stop him from having he did just that. The lawyer face turned a lovely shade of pissed which made Snafu heckle.

After that the lawyer went from bar to bar, club to club, talking the managers into pressing charges against him. If Flo hadn’t sent her brother to his defence then he was sure he would have never gotten out of that cell. Who knew Flo had a brother with many fancy law degrees.

Four counts of criminal damage. Three counts of instigating violence. And an unreasonable amount of criminal damage. Wrightman had apparently promised each of the managers that he would represent them in court without a need for payment. Without that promise Flo’s brother said the managers would have never pressed any charges.

They were all bullshit charges. All of them brought against him because some fancy pants lawyer who was paid too much wanted to punish him. Flo’s brother said most of them would be dropped by the time they reached the Judge’s table. There wasn’t enough evidence or some shit but he said as no cctv footage had been brought into evidence.

The court date came quickly.

It only felt like the week before he was sat in a jail cell thinking of how shit this was when the letter came in the mail. Two months after he punched the arsehole attorney he would be standing in court explaining why he punched the arsehole attorney.

He had to borrow one of Burgie’s suits to go because he didn’t own anything presentable enough for a court house. Flo called her brother for legal advise and he showed up the night before to share some knowledge. They wrote out a letter to the judge explaining his history and that it was time for him to face judgement for what he had done.

They lucked out with the Judge on the case. Fuck that he’d been granted some fucking miracle when it came to the Judge on his case.Judge Turner was a saint in all three of their eyes by the time they would be walking out of the court house.

In an odd twist from the universe Judge Turner, before he became a Judge, used to be a Marine himself. True he had served a long time before Snafu and Burgie had but the man still held the same beliefs and principles as every Marine had. Especially the ones who took the lead. None of them thought that he would be a soft touch against Snafu, his record showed that he didn’t do favourites or show special treatment no matter a persons background.

After his case was called the Judge took his seat and quietly listened to everything the clerk read out about the charges against him, the evidence and even Wrightman’s little speech of how dangerous Snafu was. Wrightman told the Judge how he feared that ‘Mister Shelton has the prospect of becoming a very dangerous criminal’. What a dick. Like he knew anything about him that he hadn’t made up to suit his lies.

Fucking lawyers.

Judge Turner may have been silent but his eyes had been focusing on detail. The entire time that he sat there listening to the case against him the Judge’s eyes where focused on Snafu. Studying his reaction to everything said against him. Nodding oddly as Snafu’s personal history was read out for the entire room to hear. If he had a closer seat, Snafu could say for certain that he saw a smile appear of the Judges face when they reached the part about his service record.

He didn’t let it show like Writghtman wanted him to show, but he was pissed at how much attention the Judge was paying to him. He wasn’t the kind of man who would take offence to another man eyeing him up. In any other place he would be making eyes and suggestions back but this wasn’t some bar with smoke in the air. This was a court room where he had to swear on a bible for fuck sake it felt wrong here.

His case began at ten thirty by they time everything had been said it had gone past thirteen hundred so the Judge called for a break.

Outside the room Wrightman continued to stare at him, glaring daggers at him. It was only right that he stare back with as much hatred as he could muster. He might have been rolling over and taking whatever punishment the Judge deemed suitable for him but that didn’t mean he was an easy push over. This was just another way for him to channel his anger which is all he was looking for.

“You do know if you get jail time it still won’t help,” Burgie told him standing next to him outside the court house having what might be his last smoke of freedom. “You seeking help and looking in all the wrong places.”

Burgie had commented on how odd he had been acting though this whole thing and how unlike him it was. The Snafu that Burgie had first met would have fought more against this whole thing and would most defiantly be making more obscene comments. He had said to his old friend that maybe he was done being the person everyone thought he was.

“What are the right places I should be looking?” he asked in a tired voice not bothering to look his way. It was far more entraining to annoy the good Lawyer man.

“With a doctor perhaps,” Flo stated starring as intently at the lawyer as Snafu was. She laughed as she added,“Or a priest.”

“Ain’t no priest on this earth willing to go near me,” Snafu smirked with satisfaction. Back when he was serving, there was one time a priest had come to liven up their perishing spirits. After sharing one word with the man he could swear the priest was a breath away from exercising whatever demons lay under his skin.

“I’m being serious here!” Burgie snarled stepping into Snafu’s field of vision ending his menacing game with the lawyer. If he thought that the little outburst was all that Burgie wanted to say he was wrong. A door had been opened and now Burgies' thoughts where escaping. “You have to start taking your life seriously. You’re angry I understand that but you have to start managing it in a healthy way before it destroys you Merriell.”

The use if his real name was always something that made him stop and think. As an adult he had always answered to something different. ‘Snafu’ being the one that he had gone by for the longest now. Even when he was serving he was hardly ever called by his actual name. So when a person did use his birth name it was reason to shut up and listen. But being quiet was never really natural for him.

“You ain’t my Ma Burgin!” He started pushing himself forward to break into Burgie’s personal space. “Maybe I wan-”

Florence however knew what it was he was going to say having heard him make this confession one drunken night. She also knew what that this was not the time to share such a confession with her husband while Snafu’s fate still hung in the unknown.

“Both you need to calm down,” She told them both. Pulling her husband to her side she nodded with her head towards the man still studying them all. “He’s looking for any else he can use against you. I will not let him take both of you from me.”

All of them turned to look at the man starring at them still. If he knew then what he had now he never would have targeted the ape in human form that night. He would have gone with his first instinct of the jackass of a waiter instead of the biggest and ugliest man in the room. Burgie had done what Burgie did and found out all he could about the Lawyer and what he did discover did not settle with him well.

The man had multiple cases of harassment against him that never went anywhere. One of Burgies’ pals told him that internal investigation was underway against him but he couldn’t share what the investigation was about. That alone was enough of a red light for him to know this was not a man any of them should fuck with. Which is why Snafu’s ‘looks like trouble I should mess with it’ instinct must have kicked in when he saw him that stupid night.

“Time’s up. The Judge will be getting back in now. You couldn’t just go about and have mindless hooks ups, had to try you’re own solo fight club,” Burgie hissed as he led them back towards the building.

“No one wants to fuck a cripple.” Snafu whispered under his breath, dropping the end of his cigarette before following Burgie and Flo.

For him it was a true statement. Not that he hadn’t been able to get his dick seen to by willing participants, he still managed to find his way into someones bed when the urge wanted itching. But it wasn’t as often as it used to be. Before, when he had all of his body parts, his ‘super power’ had worked tirelessly. Anyone he wanted in bed he could get but since his accident some people took one look at the leg and suddenly became less aroused. He was currently going though such a dry spell that he and his hand had become very close with one another.

They all sat their ready for the Judges decision expecting the worse, worse case time in prison best case some community service, what they weren’t expecting was for their miracle gift of Judge Turner granting them an additional miracle.

“When I look at you Mr. Shelton I feel as though I am starring into a mirror,” Turner removed his glassed from his face as he leaned forward in his seat. Instead of addressing the whole room he made sure that Snafu knew he was addressing him alone with what he next said. “A man who served his country even after being dealt a rotten hand. An anger under your chin that you can’t seem to shift. When I joined the Marines I was much like you are but they taught me what I feel you have still yet to learn. Or at least what you have yet to put into practice.

“I’ve done my research on you Merriell Shelton and I feel I know what kind of man you are. The letters statements given to me by a Mr RV Burgin and Florence Risley Burgin along with a letter sent to me by your ex-Gunny. It seems you have a lot of people fighting for you and yet you don’t seem to be fighting for yourself. I am ready for verdict and sentencing.”

Snafu was found guilty.

The Judge had thrown out some of the charges stating there was insignificant evidence. He’d thrown some judgemental looks towards Wrightman as he gave his explanation for agreeing with Flo’s brother argument to dismiss those charges. How he wished that he’d had his phone out to snap the look of the evil lawyer’s face as the Judge dragged him.

However the evidence for the other charges where clear and unarguable, for those he was found guilty.

“You are one lucky son of a bitch Shelton!” Wrightman shouted from behind them. “How does a violent low life like you manage to get off with a probation and a little free therapy.”

Judge Turner had said that sentencing him to time behind bars would do no one any good. But there was something he could enforce that might work but would be just as effective at showing him how he had to change his ways.

“He doesn’t need to learn to manage his anger,” Wrightman continued to say addressing his partner. “He needs to rot in a jail cell with the rest of his pathetic lot.”

“You got something you want to say to me!” Snafu called back at him. Trying to turn but being held in place by Flo. That woman had hidden muscles.

“You might have gotten away with it this time but you and you’re pathetic little threesome better watch yourself! You’re all a disgrace to the Marines!”

The comment worked the way that Wrightman had wanted it too, Snafu reacting through his anger and not taking a moment to let the words wash over him. Had it not been for Burgie seeing what direction Wrightmans words where heading and had already placed himself in position to hold Snafu back from charging at the man walking down the court house steps.

“I’ll be keeping an eye out for you Shelton. All of you!”

Wrightman continued to laugh and make comments as he got further and further away from the group. Flo ordering Snafu to calm down while Burgie made sure he stayed where they stood and not break the conditions of his probation an hour after they had been set.

“It’s what he wants Snafu,” Flo informed him warning him against doing anything. Slowly the red mist faded from over his eyes and he allowed the other two to push him towards the car. He didn’t dare say anything as Flo drove them home and Burgie sat behind them shuffling papers.

They all knew there where very few things that could completely unleash Snafu in the matter of a second. One of those things was messing with the people that he loved. Should anyone dare to touch one of them then nothing would survive his wrath.

He worked hard to hold back when around Burgie and Flo. He didn’t want the two of them to see him lose it completely. Fear that they would learn how much of a monster he was, that he could be, and desert him ran deep inside. Even he was scared of how far he could go unstopped.

One time he had failed to hold it back in front of Flo and he hadn’t been able to look her in the eye the same since. The destruction he had left behind that day had been immense. He’d run away for almost a month before he had come back waving a metaphorical white flag. Neither Flo nor Burgie had asked where he had been, the hole in the wall he had punch had been filled in and the furniture replaced. They acted like nothing had happened before he had left and he was fine to follow their lead. Even if Flo had spent a few weeks following not acting the same around him.

“I’ll go with you to the station in the morning,” Burgie stated while placing the plates on the table. It was times like this that Snafu saw all the differences between them. While he was happy to eat the take out with his fingers and the boxes they came in Burgie always had to break out the plates and forks. “Wrightman will no doubt show his face. Try and get a rise out of you with witnesses”

There where many conditions that he had to abide by over the next few, long draining, months. One of which was to be fitted with one of those tracking ankle things. Should he violate any of the other conditions Judge Turner said he would start his punishment afresh and he’d serve a true sentence.

“Then I am coming too. I trust neither my boys around him.” Flo took a swig of her wine before glancing at the two challenging them to talk back. When they didn’t she smiled to herself feeling victorious.

“You both know I am capable of behaving,” it didn’t hurt him when they laughed at his statement. He didn’t believe his own lie.

"I am making this glass last until I go to bed,” Flo declared swirling the wine in the glass she held.

“You don’t haveta not drink ‘cause o’ me,”Snafu wiping his hands on his suit trousers. The glare that Burgie gave him was hysterical.

One of the other conditions he had no choice but to follow was no alcohol. At all. He wasn’t allowed near any bars or restaurants that served alcohol in case it where to incite him into the bad behaviour that got him in trouble in the first place. He wasn’t even allowed to consume any in the comfort of his own home which was a bullshit condition if he was asked. Which he wasn’t he just had to live with it.

Burgie had suggested and Flo quickly agreed, that starting the next morning none of them would drink until Snafu’s last sessions in twelve months time. It was a long as fuck time to go without a drink and he wouldn’t wish it on his enemies, cept maybe the dick who ran him over and that ass-fuck Wrightman, so he would never put his best friends though it. But he loved them more for saying they’d support him though this torture the Judge wasinflicting on him.

One day he would get the chance to thank them for everything they did for him. For everything they put up with from him. And what they were going to do for him. He would never be able to repay them for everything. Sometimes it was only that thought alone that kept him waking up everyday just to make sure he could fulfil it.

Flo didn’t have to patch up his wounds, stay up late to talk shit with him, or even welcome him into her home. Burgie didn’t have to save his life that day, help him get a job every time he lost one, or offer him a place to live with his wife. But they both did all that for him and he did nothing but cause shit around them all the time.

"Think of all the money we’ll save,” Burgie smiled widely.

Snafu smiled back. Perhaps the money they saved they could put towards that dream child the two of them secretly wanted. He’d had conversations with the two about their wishes. How both of them wanted a child but both of them thought the other didn’t. He wondered about dropping hinted to the two the other wanted the same as them but it was a marriage thing. They didn’t need him to direct them in the bedroom.

Though if they ever asked for him to join he wouldn’t turn them down.

“Burgie?”

There was something else on his mind since he left the court house.

“Merriell?”

A name connected to the other condition he had to follow. He swore he had heard that name mentioned to him before but he couldn’t recall where or when.

“You know anything bout this Doctor Sledge?”

**Author's Note:**

> Well I hope that you enjoyed my experiment. Blood sweat and literal tears went into this. I'm not on tumblr anymore because of reasons. I don't think I deleted it so it might still be there but this idea sorter started on there and then took me months to write (and that's part one alone). This isn't where I wanted to leave it but It was getting so long and the part I wanted to leave it at is another four thousand words so. Enjoy this and I hope the next part to be out soon. Al.


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